The Daily Startup: Venrock Goes Where the Entrepreneurs Are

Investors in venture firms are less inclined today than they were in the past to spread their resources among dozens of venture firms, and instead are concentrating more dollars among established firms with a track record. Riding the crest of that wave is Venrock, one of the nation’s oldest venture firms, which just closed its seventh fund at $450 million, Tim Hay reports for VentureWire. Venrock likes to back startups whose technology is meant to exist “at the intersection of different industries,” Partner Bryan Roberts said, such as health-care software. “We used to see a lot of firms going single-industry, doing only consumer tech, or only enterprise. We’ve never bought into that. Venture firms should follow great entrepreneurs.”

ALSO IN TODAY’S VENTUREWIRE (subscription required):

Gen9raised $25 million to expand the use of technologies that help corporations apply synthetic biology to the production of drugs, chemicals, foods and other products. Existing investors, which include Agilent Technologies, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kraft Group and PBM Capital Group, participated in the round.

Geekatooraised $1.7 million in new seed funding to compete with BestBuy’s GeekSquad by delivering guaranteed tech help on-site. Investors in the round include 500 Startups, the mobile and social games company DeNA Co., and many individual angel investors.

GetYourGuide, a Berlin-based company that operates an online marketplace selling tickets to tours, adventures and leisure activities around the world, raised $25 million in a Series B round of funding co-led by Spark Capital and Highland Capital Partners.

RockYou has secured a $10 million loan from digital lender FastPay to acquire forgotten online social and mobile games. The company–backed by DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International, Sequoia Capital, SK Telecom Ventures and Softbank–has shifted its business model from building mobile social games to monetizing them.

(VentureWire is a daily newsletter with comprehensive analysis of all the investments, deals and personnel moves involving start-ups and their venture backers. For a two-week trial, click here.)

ELSEWHERE AROUND THE WEB:

Alibaba Invests $120 Million in Kabam. Alibaba Group Holding is backing another California startup, disclosing on Thursday a $120 million strategic investment in gaming company Kabam and a partnership to publish and distribute its free-to-play mobile games. The deal, which values San Francisco-based Kabam at more than $1 billion, marks the Chinese Internet giant’s latest push to reach more potential users before its coming IPO. The investment is the latest in a series that Alibaba has poured into U.S. tech companies, Mike Isaac and Michael J. de la Merced report for the New York Times.

Nordstrom Will Pay $350 Million for Trunk Club. Nordstromwill pay $350 million to buy Trunk Club, the Chicago-based men’s online clothing and personal styling company, multiple sources familiar with the terms of the deal told re/code. It looks like a good exit for Trunk Club’s investors including Greycroft Partners, U.S. Venture Partners, Apex Venture Partners and Anthos Capital, which had together put more than $12 million into the company.

Twitter Finds a New Acquisition. Twitter acquired Mitro, a startup founded by former Google engineers that manages passwords in Web browsers to help people share accounts, the WSJ’s Scott Austin reports. Mitra’s team will join the Twitter flock to work on geolocation projects, and the startup’s product will become an open-source, community-run project.

Ephemeral Job?Snapchat‘s vice president of engineering has left the company after six months, TechCrunch reports. The Los Angeles-area startup had poached Peter Magnusson from Google, where he was an engineering director.

Behind the Scenes of a Seed Investment Strategy. Two weeks after NextView Ventures announced its second seed fund, Partner David Beisel takes us deep inside the deals the firm has made so far to see which investment themes have emerged. Example: There’s money to be made in ad-tech, provided that a startup is trying to accomplish a “step-function” change, not just an incremental one.

What the Valley Really Thinks of Secret. Some major CEOs and investors in Silicon Valley are (anonymously) disappointed that Secret has been funded to the tune of some $36 million, writes PandoDaily’s Sarah Lacy, who calls the anonymous messaging app “indefensible.”

VC Returns Keep Rising. The latest data from Cambridge Associates says that venture capital returned 4.9% in the first quarter, outpacing two public-market indexes, Timothy Pollard reports for Pensions & Investments. The 10-year index hit 10%, the first time it has been in double-digit positive territory since 2009.

Comments (1 of 1)

Considering the stretchable versions of journalism Sarah Lacy practices I would be skeptical of her claim. On its own the merits of Secret is debatable but Sarah questions doesn't raise doubts just what is her agenda in trashing the company.

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